1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a vehicle control apparatus, a vehicle, and a vehicle control method.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, with a view to enhancing the performance of fuel economy of a vehicle, a technology called idling stop for stopping an engine at the time of temporary stop has been prevailing. For example, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-163281 (JP 2011-163281 A), there is proposed a technology for rapidly charging a battery immediately before stop, recovering the value of a storage state (an SOC) of the battery to a value equal to or larger than a predetermined threshold (hereinafter referred to also as “an SOC threshold”), increasing the number of opportunities to execute idling stop, and enhancing the performance of fuel economy of the vehicle in the case where the value of the SOC of the battery is smaller than the SOC threshold when the vehicle speed is lower than a predetermined value.
However, according to the technology of Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-163281 (JP 2011-163281 A), the SOC threshold is constant, so there are the following possibilities. For example, when the time for idling stop is long, the storage amount of the battery is insufficient, and idling stop may be forcibly canceled in mid-course. Besides, when the time for idling stop is short, the battery may be charged with a storage amount (referred to also as “an amount of electricity”) that is more than necessary to execute idling stop. Then, the presence of these possibilities may result in the insufficient enhancement of the performance of fuel economy. Therefore, technologies allowing the battery to be appropriately charged in accordance with the length of the time of the occurrence of idling stop have been desired.